I attended the Charlotte hamfest today, and had a chance to look over
the Orion prototype and twist the knobs. I really would like to buy a
Ten-Tec rig (for the serviceability aspect), and I have no ax to grind
with them at all. But- I'd advise any of you who are considering the
Orion to look closely at the real thing before signing up to buy one.
The first thing I noticed was the bright plastic chrome skirts on many
of the knobs. Reminded me of a 1980's boombox - all black plastic, with
lots of plastic chrome. I was further discouraged when I grabbed the
main tuning knob and checked out the feel. The tuning knob feel was
exactly like that on a boombox - no weight, impossible to "spin", felt
like it was driving something through a rubber band, with lots of
friction in the bearings (or maybe, no bearings). It was considerably
worse than the tuning feel on the Jupiter sitting near it. The
subreceiver tuning knob was identical in size, appearance, and feel.
Granted this was a prototype, so there may be time to improve these
things before they start shipping later this year.
Maybe Ten-Tec will raise the state of the art with their electronics,
but I think a rig in the $3.3K price range should look like a serious
instrument. This one didn't.
Other observations: The screen was monochrome - not sure that's a
drawback. The spectrum or band display at the bottom of the screen
appeared to have a rather slow refresh rate - maybe once or twice per
second - not real-time like a panadapter. Maybe the Icoms are that way
too?
K8AC
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